


Doing It On Purpose

by Scruggzi



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Banter, Breaking the Fourth Wall, F/M, Miss Fisher Movie, URST, references to fan fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 23:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12376557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scruggzi/pseuds/Scruggzi
Summary: Come on. They must know what they are doing to us...





	Doing It On Purpose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sarahtoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarahtoo/gifts).



> I love this trope so hard. Many thanks to Sarahtoo for punctuation and helping me fix the ending.

Jack was leaning against the fourth wall of his office waiting for his partner to arrive. Which wall that was, was of course up to the discretion of the reader, but it would help for continuity if it was one of the ones near his desk. It was inevitable of course that Miss Fisher would arrive eventually, he was fairly sure that he must do most of his job without her presence, but there was an important plot point coming up and she would never forgive him if he left her out.

Sure enough, he heard the familiar clip of her heels just out of shot. It was important not to smile despite the provocation; that way, when he did, it would be all the more gif worthy. Phryne entered in a whirl of feathers and silk, taking up her place on his desk. They both glanced down momentarily to check if the scene had been amusingly captioned yet, but apparently it required more banter before the audience would bite.

“Hello, Jack,” She made sure to clip the k in a way which made bisexual women’s knees weak. She did enjoy the attention, and a little queering of characters never hurt anyone.

“Miss Fisher,” that very slight smile was calculated to make fangirls across at least four continents fall off their respective sofas and inundate Slack with the fainting emoji, “how can I be of assistance?”

“I think you’ll find, Inspector, it’s I who can assist you.” That line might make it to a t-shirt if she was lucky. Possibly a tote bag, as long as no irate man-children got pissy about it - it was pretty gender neutral, after all. Inspectors could be women by 2017, even if some men still tempted you to hit them with an axe.

“Is that so? You’ve solved my case already then? That was quick work, even for you.” The fans loved it when he showed how obviously attracted he was to her competence. Another little bit of wish fulfilment stemming from the patriarchy and its tired inability to get its shit together nearly a century after canon.

“Naturally. I am the eponymous heroine after all.” She responded smugly. Sadly, it was occasionally necessary to bring that fact up, although it really shouldn’t be.

“I do try not to let people forget it.” He said apologetically, sitting down and leaning back in his chair so the light caught his cheekbones at a perfect, knicker-melting angle which did nothing to support his argument. It wasn’t his fault. Take it up with the lighting director.

Phryne shot him a side eye - she was never a hundred percent sure if he was doing that kind of thing on purpose or not. That was probably part of the appeal. Well, two could play at that game. Her own cheekbones had a knife sharp, drop-dead perfection that could have spawned a thousand vampire AUs if the fandom skewed a little younger. Probably a lucky escape.

She did that cat-like head tilt thing that had all the bisexual women in the audience glancing at the needle on their personal Kinsey scale and watching it flick decisively toward boobs. Then the camera panned back to Jack and the damn thing began swinging like a metronome. This forced most of those fans to give up on it entirely, citing its generalised inability to cope with the overwhelming hotness of Phrack and muttering rebelliously about trans erasure.

“To be honest, I’m not sure this one made all that much sense,” she admitted, drawing the audience’s attention reluctantly back to the plot. “We might have to make meaningful eye contact for a while and hope no-one notices.”

“I think I could cope with that. Although I could say something very decisive whilst leaning against a table if that would help?”

“I’m sure it would, Jack, but let’s face it, that offer has as much to do with getting another Tumblr photo montage as it does with solving the case. It would make far more sense if I stalked around the room dramatically drawing spurious but miraculously accurate conclusions.”

“I do enjoy it when you do that,” he admitted, the remark was perhaps a little less guarded than he ever was in canon, but there was that one PBS promo where he totally admitted out loud how distracting he found her desk lounging, and to be fair, everybody knew.

“Oh I know.” She grinned at him appreciatively, leaning forward across his desk, moving a little closer to him. Her eyes drifted pointedly down to his mouth, she didn’t actually lick her lips in anticipation but it was definitely implied.

Jack swallowed. This was getting dangerously close to the kind of E fic where he finally snapped and they wound up fucking on his desk with no regard for how totally fired that would probably get him. They were a personal favourite, although he wasn’t sure he wanted Phryne to know just how many of them he’d read. He had, after all, been single and probably celibate for an ambiguous but undoubtedly lengthy period – and really, who could blame him? Some of those fics are just _ngggghhh_.

Phryne hoped that they had crossed out of canon and into the kind of E fic where Jack snapped and they spontaneously fucked on his desk. Those were always delicious and often improbably satisfying. Fic writers were always so generous with their orgasms, she hardly ever came away unsatisfied when having sex with Jack. She didn’t like to remind them too often about all the other people she enjoyed having sex with; it would only upset them, since they were so very invested in her sexy crime fighting partnership with the dishy Detective Inspector who she was _totally not in love with at all_. She could hear the collective voices of the entire audience and at least 80% of the regular cast calling bullshit on that thought, but stubbornly paid them no attention.

The two detectives continued to eyebang for several seconds, slowly edging closer as made-for-TV slow burn dissolved into audience wish fulfilment. You could practically feel the presence of that Adventure Time gif with the fox and goose that started out as some kind of angry guy meme.

The audience held their breath.

Both detectives looked up sharply as someone utterly failed to interrupt them.

“Damnit, Hugh,” Phryne almost broke character in her exasperation, “do you think he’s gotten himself stuck in the set again?”

Jack rolled his eyes, totally abandoning both his trademark courtesy and the 1920s vernacular.

“Well he is the universal butt monkey, it’s not like he can really help it.”

Phryne thought this was a little ungenerous, as Hugh could be surprisingly competent when it served the needs of the plot. Nevertheless this did provide her with an opportunity she was loath to squander.

“Well, if we’re all alone, Inspector…” she let the suggestion hang, daring him to act on his baser impulses and the very explicit desires of the fandom.

Jack made the mistake of rolling his eyes, and in doing so, caught sight of the T rating floating above their heads. He repressed urge to curse with some difficulty, an entirely pointless effort given that the writer had no such qualms, but he was far better mannered than she was and much more professional. He had a tie and everything. He loosened it a little, partially because Miss Fisher’s flirting was making him feel a little hot under the collar, but mostly because the writer knew her audience. She was barely resisting the urge to add kittens to the mix.

“Not yet, Miss Fisher, we still have a whole movie to torment them with.”

“Oh, yes. That’s going to be fun,” her eyes were sparkling with mischief but, touched by the tender look of admiration and want in Jack’s eyes, she employed her soft, empathetic voice. It was super-hot and all the w/l/w in the audience started wobbling again. “Do you think they will ever let us resolve this?” she asked, gesturing between them.    

“Perhaps,” he replied, ever the pragmatist, “but if not there’s always fanfic.”

He eyebrows shot up in delighted surprise - she hadn’t expected her noble inspector to even know about the more salacious corners of the fandom.

“Oh yes, Inspector and you should know, _I’ve read all of them._ ”

Jack met her eyes with that oh-my-gods-how-are-you-two-not-fucking-already expression he had perfectly honed by season two.

“As have I, Miss Fisher, as have I.”

They held their gazes locked together as the iris zoomed in and the URST remained stubbornly intact.

After all, resolving it is what the M and E ratings were made for, and as writers, we are not here to apologise.

Having appealed to the sisterhood for advice and accurate punctuation, the author uploaded to AO3, hoping that she had spread enough giggles to recruit a few more unsuspecting readers to the ~~cult~~ fandom before the movie came out.

She was totally not just in it for the kudos.

Honest.

    


End file.
